The Interloper
Page 13
Went to the Club with Dad tonight, got drunk. He went on and on with the “you’re a man now” speech. In my head I was like: What do I get out of it? Anyway, he told me I could get a car now if I decided which ones I liked that were also affordable enough. I can’t stop thinking about which one I want. He said no used cars so the Porsche is out. I think I want a Blazer or a Scirocco. The more I think about it, the cooler the Blazer is. Blazer. Yeah.
Got in a fight with Denise because she wants to follow me everywhere I go. Asked Dad about it—he said women are like that and you need to make boundaries for them. Talked to Jeff about starting up a poker night—guys only.
High School Senior Year
At the beginning of the summer I told Denise I wanted to play around some more but she just keeps coming back to me, which is fun for a while but gets annoying quick. I never learn. She thinks things will continue after high school but I can see from Patty and her new friends that everything changes. I told Denise today I like having sex with her and that’s it. She started to cry and I told her to leave. I had to tell it like it was. She’ll be back though and we’ll go round and round. It’s fun till I cum.
In deep shit. Rolled the Blazer. Dad said he’d take care of it but I had never seen him so bummed out. I am still pretty fucking drunk. Went to the club in the afternoon, hung out all day, drinking beers and whatever, finally got up the nerve to talk to this college chick who works behind the front desk. Played it cool like I was sober. She said we should go for a drive when she got off, which was half an hour later. We went for a drive and I crashed the car while we were messing around and driving. Luckily I didn’t hit any other cars (we were in the canyons) and so there were no cops until after Dad got there. I asked Dad if the girl was going to get in trouble and he said not to worry because it wasn’t my problem if she did. Look what she dragged me into, after all. I played “dumb kid” with the cops. Mom as usual overreacted and is trying to get Patty to talk to me on the phone from her job.
Unbelievable winter waves. Gulf of Alaska swells. College applications suck. I want to go to college in Hawaii but Dad says if I really want to surf the rest of my life, I’d better go to a good college so I can afford to someday.
Denise and I are really good, just casual. I’m not in love with her and she knows it so she doesn’t ask. But it’s all good again. She says I need to cool down and tune into the beauty of the universe. Booty of the universe.
I have to write my yearbook page stuff. I can’t believe they want it so early. Patty had an idea for me to do the periodic table but with elements from my life. So far I’ve got: Good Waves, Panchos Tacos, Blazer, Family, Club, Jeff and Phil, Baseball, Mr. Meow, Denise (maybe?)
Haven’t written in here in a while. Don’t know why I picked it up tonight. So many things going on. “The best time of our lives.” So many changes. This time next year I’ll have already finished a semester of college.
Didn’t end up doing periodic table thing. Couldn’t fill all the spaces and the whole thing was way too “Patty” anyway. She gets all excited about an idea and then tries to make everyone else into another version of her. I think I’m going to major in political science. I told the career counselor I wanted to make a lot of money but I didn’t want to major in economics cuz I hate my econ class so bad right now. Four years of that shit would suck ass.
Reggie Erb is on my shit list. If I kill him and go to jail, look here and see the reason why: At Monroe he hung out with all of us and played baseball. But when we came to Franklin High he got into theater and reading, which is fine. He has a shirt that he made himself: “Shakespeare Saved My Life.” You want to speak a dead language and prance around in tights, okay by me. Live and let live, theater fags included. But today the prickmeister sees me walking down the hall and points at my varsity letter and says: “No way Calvin, you’re a walking cliché,” like he was some high and mighty judge of the school. I look at him and I don’t know what to say because he’s the cliché. So I say: “Sensitive, artistic, outsider, homo: cliché.” He gets all excited and says I’ve proven his point, that I’m a typical varsity bully, etc. I walked away. We used to be friends before he thought he was better than everyone else.
Boulder! Far enough away from parents and Patty but close enough to drive home on breaks. All the snowboarding I can take. Plus it’s a party school—Honorable Mention on the Playboy list. Killer.
Reggie Erb made fun of my hard-earned varsity letter, and I pointed out how unoriginal his lazy pose was. Who’s the bully?
Patty brought home some guy named Luke to meet Mom and Dad. She says “it’s serious” like he was on life support. I was hoping she would find a new type after college but no dice. Someone told me that chicks always want to date their fathers but that must be BS because in Patty’s case the guys she dates are nothing like Dad. This loser was no exception. She picks the weak-spined ones, the ones she can order around. They can’t get their shit together, so she gets it together for them. Like she wants a pet or something. She wants them to be there all the time so she can ignore them and not worry about them. I don’t get it. She goes through them pretty quick b/c they end up having such boring relationships. She should get an iguana instead of a boyfriend, then she’d be happy. And a terrarium.
Luke the puke tried to chum up with me to gain an ally in the family. He’s obviously afraid of Dad and inept at sweet-talking Mom, so I’m his only option. A typical weasel, looking to stick his nose in any open crack. I would give him a break if I liked him at all. Patty is majorly pissed that Dad won’t let her and Luke share a room. Luke “agreed” with Dad, which pissed off Patty even more. She stormed off and left me to hang out with her boyfriend. We played catch in the yard to get out of the house. I felt bad for him b/c he couldn’t win either way in that argument. But I still threw the ball hard and he shook out his hand every time he caught it. I hope people at Boulder are cool.
College Freshman (Winter Break)
Pledged Beta (same as Dad)
Date parties rule!
Danced with ladies at old folks home on Halloween—smelled bad but was more fun than I thought it would be. Frat more than drinking and puking.
Wisdom in Beta house bathroom: “No matter how hot she is, bro, someone somewhere is sick of her shit!”
Trying to stay in touch with Jeff and Phil harder than I thought it would be. Made all kinds of new friends at school but also realizing how much of my life I owe to Jeff and Phil and how much I actually miss them. We played it cool in September, but now I feel like my life is getting super-slowly torn in two. Talked to Dad about it and he smiled and said “You’re becoming an adult.” We played golf after. Mom no longer on me about changing my room—I try to be more patient with her. Patty engaged to Luke but I don’t want him as a bro-in-law.
College Freshman (Summer Break)
Saw Denise working at supermarket & pregnant!!! by some guy I don’t know, older. Looks like she decided to go way blue collar (white trash) which surprised me. I knew she grew up in an apartment but still I thought she’d go to City College at least.
Good news! Luke broke off engagement with Patty. She’s devastated but Dad and I agree she’s better off. Dad told me he thought Luke was a fag probably, which I had not thought of.
College Sophomore (Winter Break)
Short break—going back early to ski more. All okay at home. Fun with Dad at club. Mom seems lonely, obsessed with cleaning my room. Patty dating everything that moves. Saw Reggie Erb in a dog food commercial. Laughed my ass off for a day and a half.
Things going great with Andrea. She’s showing me the ins and outs of her home state. Lots of great places way off the beaten path. She has a built-in sense of adventure I really like. Have not used the L-word with her but probably will when I get back to school. Told her the other night on the phone that I was lucky to have found someone like her. She is very sweet but a ball-buster if pushed to her limit. I never thought I would find someone that sweet. She also makes thi
ngs easy and doesn’t complain about shit.
Patty seems to be over Luke. She didn’t bring a guy home for Christmas but says she has three lined up as potential candidates. I don’t even want to know, but she keeps pestering me for my opinion. Says she has to pick “the one” before she ends up alone forever.
College Sophomore (Summer Break)
Patty’s looking for a new job, interviewing with biotech firms. She says she’s a good candidate like she’s running for president. I bet she’ll get the job if she can focus. She finally found someone who wants to marry her, but he’s older, a doctor, and he keeps giving her gifts without expecting anything in return, or so he says. She won’t marry him.
Can’t believe I’m only halfway through college. Then business school, probably. School never ends for me. Only one week to go before Junior Year and Andrea called to tell me she has been seeing someone else in her hometown. Supposedly they just started up, but I bet it’s been going on all summer. This really sucks. I can’t stop remembering all the places we used to go. It’s like a slide show in my brain, running alongside everything I’m seeing and doing.
I talked to Andrea and asked her what about us—didn’t any of that matter to her? She says she loves me but that she also loves him. I will not be played like that. I am miserable. My heart is broken. Much drinking, golf with Dad. Mom sympathetic but useless.
The real unfairness is that she is the first girl I was ever ready to say LOVE to. I was gearing up to it. And now I’ve been dumped. The worst part about getting dumped like this is that I can see how she’s played me, I can see what she was up to, and how weak and cowardly and lame it was, but I love her even more now than when we were going out. I want her so bad.
I couldn’t be going back to school on a more miserable note. Mom is very angry on my behalf. Dad says that time will heal the hurt, and that everyone has to feel this way at least once. Some days I visualize returning to school and starting fresh—it’s a big school, there are lots of chicks. I imagine what it would feel like if I had broken up with her. Other days I think I’ll just revisit all the old spots we used to go and be depressed for a while. Let my system work it out. Or maybe I should just stay here and surf it off. Who wants to go back to school and explain everything to everyone anyway?
College Junior (Before Winter Break)
Well this has got to be the ALL TIME CLASSIC move! Home for a few days because PATTY GOT MARRIED without telling anyone and now Mom and Dad are throwing a party to make it seem legit. No one’s even heard of the guy. She said they “just hit it off” on a ski trip and she knew right away that “he was the one.” She found her iguana!!! Mom couldn’t be happier. Dad thinks it isn’t going to last. I think it shouldn’t last but it will because Patty’s so fucken stubborn.
Patty Patterson. I swear to god I laughed for a minute straight at that one.
At the party, Owen was crying and hugging everyone and going on and on about his “new family.” I swear she must have found him in some animal shelter somewhere. He hugged me and called me “brother.” I didn’t want to ruin his big day so I hugged him back.
Back to school tomorrow. Up late drinking with Dad. World Series postmortem etc. I brought up Owen. Dad said that it wouldn’t break his heart if things didn’t work out, but Patty had made her choice, and whether or not we think the guy is a dipshit doesn’t matter.
Calvin Stocking Junior went back to school and was murdered nine days later, having been abducted, along with his car, from behind a roadside bar in the Rocky Mountains. I have been there. I sat at the counter at Diana’s Grill and sipped a beer, pretending to watch the baseball game, thinking this was the last CJ saw of civilization; this was his jumping-off point. The bar was full of locals. A few hours later, the first Boulder sweatshirt arrived, and behind it, a steady trickle of Calvins and Andreas, looking for an authentic place to get drunk for the night. Raven’s shadow fixed permanently on the wall. While writing Lily-letters, I returned again and again to the fertile ground of his journal because of one thing: Reggie Erb had been right. CJ had been a cliché, right down to the varsity letter. I don’t mean to strip him of his right to be a complex human being—there were glimpses of that even in some of the later entries, but it has always amazed me how well-defined he was as a person, even to himself. On the big issues he was uncomplicated. He knew who he was, knew what he wanted, and knew how he felt. There was no doubt in him.
I was all doubt, and coming face-to-face with CJ in the mirror-texts of his journal threw me into a whirlwind at the most fundamental level. I had no idea what came next. I couldn’t help but admire CJ’s sense of certainty. It made me wonder how he faced death when in those final moments he knew it was coming for him.
20
About a week after I first read CJ’s journal—I read it many times, as an object of study, as a motivator—I walked into our living room from the kitchen and found that Patty was no longer in front of the television, where I’d left her, but absorbed with something in the front window. She had pulled the curtains back (we always kept them closed once the sun was down) and appeared to be concentrating intently on something outside.
“Everything okay out there?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “I’m looking at the window, though, not out of it.”
“You’re looking at the window?”
She turned to face me. “Which one of these panes did the baseball go through?”
“The baseball?”
“Yeah, my mom told me some story about a baseball breaking one of our windows. Which one was it?”
“One of the middle ones,” I said.
“Which one?” Patty’s tone didn’t seem suspicious, just curious. Still, I was wondering where this was going.
I pointed out one of the panes. “That one, I think.”
“The window guy did a good job,” she said, examining the mullions.
“He seemed like a pro. Quick, too.”
She was looking into the pane now, watching me through the reflection.
“Did you tell my mother you thought CJ had broken the window?”
“I told her I couldn’t find the ball.”
“You didn’t tell her you thought it was CJ?”
“She has a way of suggesting things. I didn’t want to contradict her.”
Patty rolled her eyes, returned to the couch, de-muted the television. I sat down next to her, asked her if everything was okay.
“I don’t need you encouraging her,” she said.
I apologized, and we watched television, but the tension remained in the background. Not wanting a lecture on CJ, I didn’t mention it the next day, and neither did she.
Soon afterward, we were at a friend’s brunch, sitting around a large picnic table, when a girlfriend of our host burst into tears. Her mother was dying. As soon as the subject came up, Patty was poised for action. The rest of us said “sorry” and “our thoughts are with you” while Patty said “losing someone really sucks” and then told the story of her little brother’s murder.
Only then did I realize that she had begun using the same words to tell the story every time, that I knew every twist and turn, knew the way she held the trump and waited until the last second to play it.
Murder trumps cancer.
Brother trumps parents.
Patty had no idea how automated she’d become. Only someone like me, close but outside, could see the patterns. A marriage fails or succeeds based on what one does with those patterns. An average wife has to listen to fishing stories, an average husband has to hear about the latest shoes, and we learn to respectfully tune out our spouses’ pet fancies. But this was no fishing, no shoes. This was a major traumatic event, as big as big deals get. And she’d turned it into rote. Her shields were going up. No amount of analysis or discussion is going to change us. Life is a plane crash—you know you’re going down but you can do nothing to stop it. Patty was curdling. I was trying to bring my wife back from the world of unfeeling.
Dear Lily
When you have a bigger heart than other people you have to be a private person. Otherwise you’re just going to end up in trouble. Don’t worry about getting to know me. I am private but I am not all closed up inside like some people I know. I have been careful with you. I will not fall for the same trick twice. I mean my ex. I am happy you got rid of Clancy.
You will never know me and I will never know you. But we all try don’t we. You asked me what happened to land me here and frankly I probably wouldn’t have told you unless you asked because it is a sad stupid story.
I am not much of a storyteller unlike some friends of mine. I have never liked to boast or make things out to seem more to my benefit. I’ve seen too many liars in my life and I have always considered bending the truth to be an ugly quality like having a rotten tooth.
I didn’t kill anybody.
Now that I have spoiled the ending of my story I will tell you the rest. You know what they convicted me of but I wasn’t the one who did it. If I was going to kill someone NOW it would be Hoden B Murray aka the asshole who put me in here by falsely snitching.
We were drinking and rolling from bar to bar and generally being up to no good. I see now how I took my life for granted even if trouble does follow me around it’s a lot better than being caged up. We were up to no good anyway but we didn’t mean anyone any harm. My pickup wasn’t working right so when we tried to leave Diana’s Grill we couldn’t get it started. That’s the pickup you saw in the picture—a good and reliable truck except that night. Murray says hey let’s go back to the bar and see if we can borrow someone’s car. I say sure.